


ALL THE GUN FIGHTS, AND THE LIME LIGHTS, THE HOLY SICK DIVINE NIGHTS

by theadamantdaughter



Series: Sober II [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Blutara - Freeform, F/M, Zutara, an anthology of sorts, maybe smut later, modern grunge au with bending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 00:16:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16984497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theadamantdaughter/pseuds/theadamantdaughter
Summary: the painted lady stalks a killer





	ALL THE GUN FIGHTS, AND THE LIME LIGHTS, THE HOLY SICK DIVINE NIGHTS

**Author's Note:**

> began with the anonymous prompt: ❛ good girls are just bad girls that haven’t been caught. ❜

The whole of Republic City twinkles around him.

Traffic lights glittering off rain-slicked streets. Horns blaring with little discernment. Wheels spinning and screeching around turns, police sirens squealing in hot pursuit.

There.

Yon Rha. That dirt bag.

City officials have him for drug trafficking, and normally, Zuko will leave such criminals to the justice system. His nights hiding in the shadows of sleepy streets are far better spent hunting the men and women who’ve slipped through the cracks, tracking those who've hurt others and somehow escaped any punishment.

But, Yon Rha… after pursuing him for months, Zuko knows him for so much more: child labor, prostitution rings, murder. The seven to ten years he’ll spend in prison for slinging heroin hardly cut it, a fact the woman at his hip has driven home time and time again.

He glances her way, observing the delicate slope of her nose through the veil that shrouds her face. He might not know her true name, but he knows what drives her every action. Revenge.

Adulthood leveled him out in some regards – and it may go entirely against his better judgement to wrap himself up so personally in the bloodlust of another – but Zuko understands her need. He once felt this need himself.

Rising to his full height, Zuko unsheathes his dao. “You ready?”

“Do you even need to ask?”

Her voice is hoarse but disuse, but still soft at the end, curling down his spine with her pleased hum. Bones pop as she stands, the sound in her throat growing while she stretches, straightens, and coats her arms in water gathered right from the air.

To this day, it fascinates him how her element bends so easily to her will. Then again, everything she does is fascinating to him.

Zuko shakes his head of the thought. “Come on.”

Their chase takes them towards the slums of the city, to the loading docks along the harbor and out of earshot of the singing police cars. Rha is an expert escapist – that, or the officials are simply incompetent – and his chosen hideout is further proof of it.

Swanky hotels and expensive cars give way to dead water and shipping warehouses. Boats bob and knock together, an assortment of elegant schooners and dirty tugboats. The breeze toys faintly with their flags. The stench of rotten fish hangs in the air. It clings so tightly to his skin, Zuko fears it’ll never wash out, but he keeps the grey shape of Rha in range, the Painted Lady on his heel.

“When he goes below deck,” Zuko whispers, snatching her wrist and tugging her down behind wooden crates, “we slip onboard, take out his men soundlessly, then he’s all yours.”

“Why don’t I just sink the thing?”

“And launch an entire investigation?”

She scoffs. “Murdering eight of his minions and the kingshit himself won’t do that?”

“Not if you’re careful. I've been doing this a while.” His lips curl into a smile behind his mask, though she can’t see it.

Too bad. The hunt is fun; the kill is better, but some deeply hidden part of his heart wishes to share so much more with her. How stupid. And foolish. Zuko berates himself quietly and steals a look over the top of the crate.

The deck is empty. The cigar smoke dissipates with the next breath of wind.

And now he moves without any warning. Up and over the crates, darting headlong past sandbag berms and barrels of wine or whiskey awaiting the morning’s shipments, Zuko pads almost silently up the gangway.

One man falls at the edge of his dao. Another collapses when a small knife buries itself in his eye. Zuko moves on, finds another target, and from the starboard side, he hears a guttural snarl and ice shattering.

“I seem to remember something about stealth,” he growls when the Painted Lady appears on the bow.

Blood spatters her face and arms, smearing with her paint. Water makes her dress cling to her form. Her hair sticks to her shoulders, sending droplets to the boat’s mahogany deck with a sharp jut of her chin. Her eyes are wild as they roam him, and Zuko thinks she looks cruel.

Cruel and hungry and _stunning._

He swallows thickly, allowing his gaze to slip to the cabin’s door. She reads that as a signal, moves forward with the lethal strength of the ocean at her back, blasts the swinging door from its hinges and follows the torrent of water below deck.

The man she wants, soaked with grimy saltwater and spluttering, greets her invasion with a burst of flame. Zuko darts ahead, quick to redirect it. But, that’s all; no more. This isn’t his fight, it’s hers.

And she fights so well, so beautifully. She draws the water from the floor, throws the monster into the roof, tosses him back like a rag doll. He snivels with fear, begs her— she doesn’t stop, nor should she. When she has him against the wall, carefully snared in a web of ice, her look is that of a lioness with her next meal.

“Do you know who I am?”

His beady eyes dart across her face. “N-no.”

“No?”

The ice holding him melts. Yon Rha slumps to the floor and she has him a new trap, fingers twitching ever so slightly to force his head back. He’s made to take in every facet of her divine being: the red paint on her cheeks, the streaked blood of his men, the light cutting fiercely across her face, beneath the wide brim of her hat.

She knocks it off, letting it fall behind her with a small thump.

“You better take a hard look. Demon.”

And then recognition dawns, snaps through him. His eyes blow wide, the room fills with the stench of piss. He knows she’s come to kill him; he expects nothing less.

“You- the girl, the little girl. I— I’m sorry,” he manages, begging breathlessly. If Zuko had the ability, he imagines he’d find the man’s heart thundering rapidly. “I’ll do anything! Anything to make it up to you! Please!”

The Painted Lady cocks her head.

“Please?” she repeats mockingly. “Please? Isn’t that what my mother said? Please, don’t hurt her. Please, take me instead.”

A haughty laugh rings around them, making Zuko flinch—

“Too bad she’s not here to plead with me! Katara, darling, he’s not worth the stain. Katara, darling, _please!”_

—and then?

Silence.

Stillness.

Death.

There’s no blood, none of the violence Zuko expects. Rha’s lifeless body lands with a thud in the center of the yacht’s cabin. The Painted Lady lowers her hands— Wait. No. Her name is Katara.

Katara, Katara, Katara.

He prays for a future where that name falls off his tongue, the syllables full of tenderness and this… budding affection. He wishes for a future where she might learn his name, where she might try it out, taste the sounds and fill his mouth with different, moaned versions of it. He imagines his name would sound lovely coming from her, like a promise instead of a curse. Gods, how he longs for it.

But, for now, his private dreams are of no importance. There are bodies to dispose of and Katara needs him.

Moving with careful persistence, Zuko touches her shoulder. She’s much less a lioness stalking prey; much more a cub, lost without her mother.

“Go,” he tells her gently. “I’ll get rid of him. And the others.”

Her eyes are shocking and blue. Hollow. Haunted.

“I’ll wait on the docks.”

She collects her hat and leaves.

* * *

 

Their journey to the center of the city carries no remnant of the evening’s urgency. Katara is quiet, reflective; Zuko doesn’t push for any conversation, aside from a nudge here and there to make sure she has strength enough to keep moving. Their progress is meandering, but too soon, they reach the hovel he calls home.

“You’re free to come up,” he offers.

She shakes her head, fingering the rim of her hat. “I never come up.”

“You look like you could use a drink. Whiskey? To take the edge off?”

“Do you think that because you know my name, things have changed between us?”

Zuko hesitates, shoves his hands in his pockets. “No, I just thought—”

“Thought there was something wrong with me? Thought I couldn’t handle it?” Angrily, Katara sweeps her hair over her shoulders and returns her hat to her head. It’s a shame to no longer see her face; even in her rage, she’s a thing to behold.

“I’m fine. I killed him. My mother’s avenged. It’s just, there’s a dozen more on the list.”

“The li— are you—?” He gives a worried look. “You don’t want to do this.”

“And, why not? Spirit, tell me.”

“Because you’re…” His breath leaves in a frustrated rush. Like always, Zuko can’t seem to find the right words, can’t voice his concerns properly and it comes out sloppily, muffled by his mask. “You’re too good for this.”

Her stare is long and suffering. She’s flat, emotionless.

Finally, “I’m not good. I just haven’t been caught.” And before Zuko can protest any further, Katara holds her hand out to him. “So, are you in? Or you out?”  


End file.
